House of Eratosthenes

Although I have no way of being completely sure of it, I’m taking it as a given that I am guilty for the crime with which I’ve been charged, which is to bore to tears one Stephen VanDyke and his friend “skio.”

A little background: There is this blog out there called “Capitol Hill Blue.” The publisher of this blog, one Doug Thompson, who is so journalistically objective and cool-headed he would like our current president to “Burn in hell,” somehow got ahold of some scuttlebutt that President Bush called the Constitution “just a GD piece of paper.”

At the time this “Piece of Paper” entry appeared in the Capitol Hill Blue blog, a Google search revealed something embarrassing: Nobody else had a word to say about it. Capitol Hill Blue was being played, or else, the Washington Post was missing out on a developing story that would put Watergate to shame! Actually, I shouldn’t say “Nobody” had a word to say about it. One other blog did: The Hammer of Truth, edited by VanDyke, which takes its name from an introductory passage in William Safire’s 25th book, Scandalmonger.

A presidential hopeful has taken a beautiful, vulnerable woman as his mistress, though both are married to others. His rival for the presidency of the United States has even more sensational secrets to guard about his own past. An ambitious journalist unearths the stories of the private lives of both, and he hefts in his hand what he calls “the hammer of truth.”

As elegant of a merger as Hammer of Truth has struck between its name, and its mission, this citation of Capitol Hill Blue impressed me then, and still does so today, as a betrayal of that mission. After all, if you wield in your hands what you call “the hammer of truth,” isn’t that hammer a weighty and potent thing because it is…you know, true? I notice Safire’s novel takes place some 200 years ago, and perhaps it’s a recent development that when you go swinging around a “hammer of scuttlebutt” or “hammer of hearsay,” you won’t get very far. I don’t know. I wasn’t alive in 1797. But I’m inclined to take the three words “hammer of truth” on their literal meaning: The “ambitious journalist” has a “hammer” because he knows the facts are on his side.

And what happens next, admittedly, is based solely on my own opinion. I think it is extravagant in the extreme to place any weight, whatsoever, on what Doug Thompson wrote. “Hammer of Truth” having done this (or so it appeared to me), I took them to task, explaining my reasons for doing so and for doubting the Thompson piece.

And the fun began.

VanDyke had some harsh words for me when I inferred from the content of his article, that he thought the facts were on his side. Obviously, it was not his intention that I, and other readers, should have presumed this, and I was chastened for my lack of intelligence in thinking this was the case. Furthermore, there was a reserve of further criticism for me because my post was — to summarize — long.

So, I did what I figured was the only sensible thing.

I wrote a follow-up that was twice as long. In my follow-up, I defined my original description of his reporting, “bullshit,” in as precise a manner as I possibly could. Essentially, what “bullshit” is, and it does seem to fit what he wrote very well, is a sense of apathy about the state of affairs. If the relevance of this is questioned, my response is simply that verity is important. Some things are irrefutable but nonetheless false; some things are unprovable but actually true. Is the original Thompson piece true? Nobody knows, although he has had problems with his sources in the past.

None of this matters to the bright fellow VanDyke, who has left me and my sluggish, unintelligent, boring mindset in the dust. See, while he’s gotten two “digs” in to me about how boring my writing is, I’m still concerned with matters of verity. And I note that, at this late date, two opportunities to address the question now behind him, VanDyke has left this entirely unaddressed. What is known? What is unknown?

After all, boring as it may be at times, this is central to whether our constitutional protections are in danger, whether President Bush is posing that danger, whether his enemies are, whether Doug Thompson is doing his job, whether the Washington Post is doing theirs. But this matters not one whit to the VanDyke camp. They’re still concerned about pithiness and cleverness. “Skio,” bragging about his impressive credentials as a student in high school, makes a point of defining “bullshit” as something having to do with the length of whatever’s being read. Great job, Skio. After you get out of high school, you’ll have a dandy time going through life simply ignoring everything that’s over, say, five hundred words. Don’t read any fine print, just sign stuff! That’s what the older folks told me when I was in high school.

Clearly, our future is in good hands.

I keed, I keed…but you know, there’s a kernel of truth in that. I’m afraid my generation is ready to pass into the ether; we who place more importance on true things spoken in a thousand words, than on feeble things of questionable veracity that can be expressed in a sentence or two. All hail the Jon Stewart generation.

Who cares if something is true? Just make sure, before the commercial’s over, you’re done saying it. I gotta pee.

Guys, if you can pay attention long enough, I have to congratulate you for coming up with this great way of ensuring the rights guaranteed by our Constitution (4,426 words, plus amendments) stay fully protected. I’m sure Thomas Jefferson would approve. Can you just imagine the birth of a republic that is sustained and nurtured this way? “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to sever the ties…aw, fuck this shit, I’m hungry and horny.”

I’m utterly fascinated that you continue to conveniently leave out the fact that I was critical of the verity of CHB in my original post. Good to see you’re able to crib the dug up mea culpa link that I provided — in the original post — and pass it off as some kind of super-sleuthing on you part.

What have you caught me doing exactly? Since you’re not quick on the rhetoric uptake I’ll spell out what my aim was in the original post on the quotes:

1) Show the quotes – because I knew it would be something that spread regardless of my involvement due to the sensational nature.

2) Examine the source – since CHB is notorious for news fakery it was my obligation to show the history of this and lay waste to the credibility of something so dubious that was leaked to a nutterbutter news site.

3) Contrast the fake message with real actions – people for some reason still believe the quotes. Those people are morons in my book. But the reality is the only reason they are so willing to swallow the load of bullshit is because Bush has a bad track record with the Constitution. As I said in the original post, actions speak louder than words.

4) Generate discussion on the TRUTH about Bush’s actions on the Constitution. The quote itself is only a segue to the real issue here, the TRUTH that Bush doesn’t respect the 4th or 5th amendment, among others. If I wrote long boring diatribes like you, I might get lucky and spread that TRUTH to like 10 people. What a win for the Constitution that would be.

So there you go, you finally got me to respond with my own bullshit rebuttal that AGREES with you that CHB is full of shit on the quote, but now takes YOU to task for propagating this rumor even further.

Or shall we call you the House of Bullshit as well?
- Stephen VanDyke | 12/22/2005 @ 02:39
Oh, and it’s painfully clear that you don’t know dick about the content early newspapers of this country.

Why do you think Congress passed the Sedition Act? Because opinion journalists like James Thomson Callendar would tread the line on libel by doing EXACTLY WHAT I DO: print hearsay quotes, debunk them so as not to incur libel, then move in for the kill with ancillary evidence that is provable.

Go read up before trying to take me to task again. I have no qualms thrashing you publicly if you want to sniff at my credibility.
- Stephen VanDyke | 12/22/2005 @ 03:04
Bush’s bad track record with the Constitution is substantiated because morons are willing to swallow the load of bullshit? Or, the morons’ willingness to swallow the load of bullshit, has no effect whatsoever on proving or disproving Bush’s bad track record with the Constitution?

You seem to be arguing for the first of those two. To monitor the moron-community, observing the speed with which a dubious quote is spread there, is a novel way to maintain an attachment to reality. My own opinion is, there’s nothing to be learned from what “morons” think, except perhaps how critical the dubious quote is to maintaining the premise that Bush is hostile to the Constitution.

The answer seems to be that such chestnuts are VERY important, which says something about the premise. But that’s my opinion. You’re entitled to yours. And you may call my blog whatever you wish, just as I choose to give yours whatever name I think makes sense. Free speech, and all that.
- mkfreeberg | 12/23/2005 @ 11:13
“Bush’s bad track record with the Constitution is substantiated because morons are willing to swallow the load of bullshit?”

It’s substantiated because his actions prove that he has little regard for Constitutional limitations of the Executive branch (Gitmo, free speech zones, spying on Americans). One quote being proved dubious (by me, even) does not wipe the slate clean, no matter how hard you try.

“Or, the morons’ willingness to swallow the load of bullshit, has no effect whatsoever on proving or disproving Bush’s bad track record with the Constitution?

The morons being those that so readily swallow a fake quote from a dubious news source. I may have propagated fake news, but I did so in the context of saying it was fake in the first place and noting the facts in regard to Bush’s actions with the Constitution.

Weighing Bush’s actions on the Constitution with one fake quote, it becomes apparent that a quote (even fake) where Bush slams the Constitution is easily swallowed. The moron statement is in regard to their inability to weigh the truthfulness of such a statement in the context of the CHB track record on fake newsery.

Since you seem bent on trolling this into the ground by ignoring the truth of Bush’s actions and warping some fake story into some kind of apologist screed, I might as well race you to the bottom: Fuck you, straight up. Waste your time slamming liberals for more pertinant issues, because there are plenty that I would agree with you on.
- Stephen VanDyke | 12/26/2005 @ 14:15

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